BAKU, Azerbaijan – Charles Leclerc insisted Ferrari\u2019s winless run this year has not diminished his belief in the team or his determination to bring the glory days back to Maranello.<\/p>\n
Despite lofty expectations coming into the season Ferrari has fallen well short of competing with the dominant McLaren team.<\/p>\n
Leclerc won three times in 2024 but has had to settle for one pole position and five podium finishes — teammate Lewis Hamilton won the China sprint race but otherwise has not been on the podium.<\/p>\n
Baku\u2019s Azerbaijan Grand Prix might provide an opportunity to claim a victory but attention for most teams has now shifted to next season and the rule change which promises to reset the competitive order.<\/p>\n
When asked how he keeps himself motivated in a season like this, Leclerc said: \u201cBecause I love this team very much, I think that\u2019s the answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always loved Ferrari and that\u2019s where I draw my motivation from, because I want to bring back Ferrari to the top, no matter how long it takes, and I\u2019ll do absolutely everything until I stop believing in the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the moment I\u2019m fully into it, I\u2019m fully working on it, and that\u2019s what motivates me, and of course that doesn\u2019t erase the disappointment that I\u2019ve had at the beginning of the season when I saw that we were quite a few steps behind McLaren, but then you reset and you find your motivation in other goals, in other targets, which is now to hopefully get a win this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s underwhelming compared to where we wanted to be, but it\u2019s the situation we\u2019re in, and as a driver I\u2019ve got to make the best out of this situation, not only for the team but also for myself, and I\u2019m very competitive as well, so the fact that we\u2019ve got two cars is also something that pushes me to keep being at the top of my game, and to keep improving, so on that I really don\u2019t like any motivation, I mean I\u2019m super motivated, but as I said, of course the disappointment was there at the beginning of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hype earlier in the year was spurred on by two factors — one being the arrival of seven-time world champion Hamilton as Leclerc\u2019s teammate, and the other being that Ferrari finished last season one overtake away from beating McLaren to the constructors\u2019 title. Ferrari has still not won an F1 championship of any kind since the constructors\u2019 in 2008.<\/p>\n
Leclerc is no stranger to the emotional rollercoaster at the Italian team, having joined in 2019. The team is often subject to huge expectations but more often than not over the past decade and a half that excitement has given way to disappointment.<\/p>\n
When asked if that will always be part of the Ferrari story, he said: \u201cI\u2019m not sure what the future holds, but I\u2019m pretty sure that Ferrari will hold its history and its iconic status, which comes obviously with a lot of hype, a lot of expectations, and it\u2019s up to us to manage it in a better way, I mean I don\u2019t think that this should be in any way an excuse of not performing.<\/p>\n
\u201cFerrari has had so much success, and it\u2019s not like when they\u2019ve had that success they didn\u2019t have the hype that came with it. So yeah, I mean, I think it will stay like that, and I think as a team it\u2019s just a matter of not really focussing and hearing the noise around the team, but just be focused on our own thing, and this is what I\u2019ve been doing since I started with the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously in 2019 was a little bit more difficult because I was young, everything was new, everything was new and there was also a lot of hype on just me being in red for my second year in Formula 1 was just very special.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut since then it\u2019s important to do a step back and to not always react on emotions and on what\u2019s being said around. I think it\u2019s very important to just stay focused, and on that I think we are doing a good job, but not good enough because we must be back at winning soon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKU, Azerbaijan – Charles Leclerc insisted Ferrari\u2019s winless run this year has not diminished his belief in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[2571,49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-154897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-auto-racing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}